Oracle CEO Safra Catz joins Trump transition team

16 Dec 2016

Safra Catz at Oracle Open World, San Francisco. Image: drserg/Shutterstock

It has emerged that the Oracle’s co-CEO, Safra Catz, is to join the executive committee of US president-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.

Oracle reported third-quarter revenues of $9.1bn, which included cloud revenues passing the $1bn mark for the first time.

SaaS and PaaS (platform as a service) revenues were $912m, up 87pc on last year, while total cloud revenues – including IaaS (infrastructure as a service) which were up 6pc year-on-year to $175m – helped Oracle surpass the $1bn mark for cloud services.

“For four consecutive quarters, our Cloud SaaS and PaaS revenue growth rate has increased,” said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz.

“As we get bigger in the cloud, we grow faster in the cloud. Our non-GAAP constant currency SaaS and PaaS growth rate is now up to 89pc.

“This growth rate acceleration has driven our quarterly cloud revenue over the $1bn mark. When Salesforce.com crossed the billion-dollar milestone, their SaaS and PaaS subscription growth rate had slowed down to 36pc, even after you include all their acquisitions.”

All the president’s men and women

Catz, who was one of the tech titans invited by Donald Trump to an exclusive pow-wow at Trump Tower in New York this week, is to join the executive committee of the president-elect’s transition team.

It is understood she told the president-elect that the tech industry would flourish if Trump reformed the tax code, negotiated better trade deals and reduced regulation.

Israel-born, America-educated Catz joined Oracle in 1999 after a career at various tech firms including Hyperion and PeopleSoft.

She joined Oracle’s board of directors in October 2001 and is credited with having driven Oracle’s 2005 efforts to acquire PeopleSoft in a $10.3bn takeover.

Named by Fortune as the 12th most powerful woman in business in 2009, Catz is understood to be the highest-paid woman among Fortune 1000 companies.

Catz has been rumoured to be a potential cabinet member in the Trump government.

Safra Catz at Oracle Open World, San Francisco. Image: drserg/Shutterstock

Updated, 9.02am, 22 December 2016: This article was updated to amend the headline and copy suggesting Oracle had surpassed Salesforce.com to become number one in enterprise SaaS revenues according to IDC. This claim by Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd in the company’s third quarter results was incorrect and IDC has publicly refuted the claims, indicating Oracle is number 4 in the SaaS segment.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com